BOSTON — The last time Alex Rodriguez was at Fenway Park, he was a WWE villain in cleats.

He was without an ally. He was treated like a war criminal by the Fenway crowd, like a piñata by Ryan Dempster and like a double-agent by the Yankees.

General manager Brian Cashman depicted Rodriguez as a liar and said he limited his conversations to hello and goodbye, concerned about the litigious state that existed between player and team. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, and Yankees team president Randy Levine engaged in a weekend of charges and counter-charges, further amping up the unease between the parties.

For three hours a day, A-Rod tried to help the Yankees win, and team officials embraced that. And for the other 21 hours they were enemies, hurling threats and challenges. That Aug. 16-18 series was the Bronx Zoo by way of Wrestlemania.

So at his Fenway locker yesterday, when I offered to A-Rod how much less noisy it is around him this visit, he chuckled and said, “That’s the understatement of a lifetime.”

He is Alex Rodriguez. So a certain amount of sensation always simmers around him. He was booed lustily in each at-bat last night in Boston’s 8-4 triumph.

Just now is not like the opening week or two after Rodriguez appealed his 211-game suspension and returned to the Yankees. Certainly nothing like his first 2013 foray into Fenway. You notice him because he is A-Rod, but there is not a 24-7 tumult encircling him.

“It is calmer and more about baseball,” Rodriguez said.

On Aug. 21, he asked his representatives to stop taking his case and fight public, and that has essentially held. And, as manager Joe Girardi said, “things move on.” The attention span and passion for any one story dims. And, boom, suddenly Miley Cyrus is twerking (banal) or President Obama is threatening (seminal), and we are off in other directions.

Rodriguez’s presence around the team and in the daily lineup has become routinized. It is no longer jarring to see him in a big league clubhouse. Yes, it still bothers a lot of folks he is playing at all — Baltimore manager Buck Showalter, for example, hardly seemed thrilled due process had Rodriguez on the field helping the Yankees and hurting the Orioles.

Maybe that is even more surprising than the volume lowering around Rodriguez — how his production has risen.

The Yankees are going to continue to need that. The loss of Brett Gardner (oblique), likely for the rest of the season, shortens the lineup and puts the punchless Ichiro Suzuki back into a more prominent role. A bottom of the order of Suzuki, Brendan Ryan and Chris Stewart looks like something June dragged in. That means the top guys must carry the club.

Rodriguez went 0-for-3 last night as he continued to struggle against John Lackey (.186 career). He walked in the seventh. Robinson Cano hit a two-out double. But Rodriguez could not score what at the time would have been the go-ahead run, gimping into third.

This was the third straight game Rodriguez was limited to being the designated hitter because of a hamstring issue — and his Posada-esque speed was overt. Girardi called the injury “a concern” after the game and Rodriguez, wearing a large ice pack on his hamstring, said he does not envision playing third before Tuesday in Toronto — and that is on turf.

Still, there is his bat for now and so far, so good on that.

In the run-up to his return, I believed Rodriguez didn’t have to perform like his MVP past to help the Yanks, merely outdo David Adams and Luis Cruz and Jayson Nix. A .700-.750 OPS would suffice as way off his norm, but way better than his replacements were delivering.

But his first 34 games are so much better than anticipated. Among third basemen with 140 plate appearances, his .879 OPS ranked only behind the 2013 gold standard: Miguel Cabrera, David Wright, Adrian Beltre and Josh Donaldson. His bat has spoken loudly even as his surroundings have grown quieter and quieter.

It is Alex Rodriguez so you always believe he is one rash act on the field or one foot-in-the-mouth comment or one new piece of evidence or one renegade on the payroll away from re-igniting the brouhaha.

But it is stunning how much quieter A-Rod World is four weeks later at Fenway. Whoever thought the 2013 version of A-Rod would walk softly and carry a big stick?